Ideas Fly To Build I-4 Bridge Faster

Anything Seems Possible In Talks For Structure Across St. Johns

April 10, 1998|By Todd Pack of The Sentinel Staff

Seminole and Volusia county officials say work on a new, wider bridge along Interstate 4 at the St. Johns River won't get under way until 2002, if then. Still, local officials are brainstorming to come up with something - anything - that might speed up construction by even a few months.

These officials, including members of the planning agencies Metroplan Orlando and Volusia's Metropolitan Planning Organization, pitched ideas Thursday at a meeting in Orlando.

The suggestions included:

*Urging the two counties to front $4 million needed to secure the right of way. The counties would be repaid after Congress hands down money for the project.

*Recruiting business groups and corporations along the interstate in Seminole, Volusia and Orange counties to lobby lawmakers to come up with the money for the project sooner than expected.

*Building the middle part of the bridge first, while officials still are negotiating with landowners on either side of the river.

``This is wild stuff,'' said Robert Cortelyou, the Florida Department of Transportation district production director who suggested starting in the middle.

``It could cut production time'' but might be impractical, he said.

No idea - no matter how wild it might have seemed - was immediately discarded at Thursday's meeting, held in the offices of Metroplan Orlando, which handles road planning for Seminole, Orange and Osceola counties.

Metroplan's chairman, Seminole County Commissioner Randy Morris, said replacing the bridge is critical to the region's growth.

State officials said the St. Johns Bridge is structurally safe, but Morris called it unsafe because it's too narrow to carry the 70,000 vehicles that cross it each workday. The existing span has only two lanes running in each direction. It was designed to carry only 30,000 vehicles a day.

It has no shoulders, so even a minor accident can block traffic for hours.

The bridge was designed in the 1950s and built in 1960, before the Disney organization unveiled plans to build Walt Disney World and before developers began building the community that would become Deltona, a city of 58,000 in southwest Volusia near the St. Johns River bridge.

Today, bridge commuters include countless tourists from along the East Coast who take Interstate 95 south to Daytona Beach, then I-4 west to Walt Disney World, said Pat Northey, a Volusia MPO member and Volusia County Council member who attended Thursday's meeting.

That means ``this isn't just a local issue,'' Northey said.

Metroplan Orlando and Volusia's MPO have made a wider bridge their No. 1 project among roads and bridges not yet funded.

In Washington, a bill passed by the House would set aside $14 million to design a new bridge and purchase the right of way. The $217 billion spending plan would give nearly $100 million to several Central Florida road projects.

The Senate's version doesn't include funding for a new bridge or several other local projects. House and Senate members are expected to work out a compromise bill later this month.

Without the federal dollars, state officials say work on the bridge probably couldn't begin until mid-2004.